Fanfic: First, Do No Harm (Fullmetal Alchemist)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Drabble: First, Do No Harm
Fandom: FMA (anime or manga version)
Character(s): Winry, Ed
Pairing: None. Okay, it depends on how you look at it ...
Rating: PG
Word Count: 100
Warnings: None.
A/N: I'm up to my ears in on-the-job training in rare book cataloging, but even that can't prevent a drabble from emerging in a good cause. It was interesting, too, to find the point at which honor trumps friendship for Winry. Crossposted from nebroadwe to Höllenbeck (i.e. hagaren_manga, fm_alchemist, fullservicefma, fma_writers, fma_fiction, ed_winry and winrylovers).
Dedication: For evil_little_dog, as a pick-me-up.

---

      She never has to ask him to stop squirming. He lies still as a mannequin while she works, unless she induces a galvanic reaction. If only all her patients had such self-control, she muses as she tinkers with his shoulder. His constant complaints (about the exam table or an imaginary draft or her perfectly reasonable disquisition on proper self-maintenance) seem little enough to endure in exchange.

      Until he grumbles, "Are you done playing doctor yet?"

      Stung, she bends and whispers in his ear, "Oh, I haven't even started."

      And steps away, grinning, until that galvanic reaction runs its course.

---

[Disclaimers: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) was created by Arakawa Hiromu and is serialized monthly in Shonen Gangan (Square Enix); the anime of the same title was directed by Mizushima Seiji and story-edited by Aikawa Sho. Copyright for these properties is held by Arakawa Hiromu, Square Enix, Mainichi Broadcasting System, Aniplex, Bones, and dentsu. All rights reserved.]

Comments

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

hee sooo cute (and ooo rare book collections)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thank you and ... well ... there is an "ooo" factor, of course (hey, that's Theodore Dreiser's Paris Baedeker, annotated within an inch of its life!), but right now it's neatly balanced by the "argh!" factor: late 19th century books crumbling to dust in my hands as I attempt to determine what about them is and is not bibliographically significant. Nothing honestly rare yet, because there's a whole system of cataloging (not to mention a language of bibliography) that I need to be trained into before I have a prayer of producing accurate records.

Mind you, though, it is fun to go upstairs to the closed stacks and look at stuff: theatrical posters, comic books (somebody just donated an enormous collection of American comics, and it's quite charming to watch the same people who handle incunabulae figure out what to do with issues of Fantastic Four), letters, the personal libraries of various authors, and random objects (e.g. Byron's tea caddy). But mostly I'm at my desk frantically jamming new knowledge into long-term memory and occasionally standing up to dust off my pants.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

still pretty cool. Once I accidentally got a rare book out of Cleveland's 'white room' a non-circulatory collection that someone screwed up and sent me interlibrary loan (basically a Fodor's guide circa 1880, probably not high value except to the writer in me)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

One of our curators makes a hobby of combing the open stacks for books that have quietly taken on value. I just dealt with a small book on London street cries that would probably fetch a couple of hundred bucks and a two-volume set describing the topography of Athens that might go as high as a couple thousand. Good thing I'm honorable (and reasonably well paid :-).

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i hear you (and I did return the book in person to the downtown library rather than shove it back thru interlibrary loan)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

You're clearly a gentleperson and a scholar, as one of my friends would say. :-)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

thanks

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

*makes squeeing sounds over old comics*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

As do most people I mention that to. The only thing that gets a bigger reaction is the -- ahem! -- explicit material. (C'mon -- if one has Sade, say, one must have context for Sade. And there's no way that stuff will last five minutes unplundered in the open stacks.)

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would be gone, gone, gone. Probably absconded with by pervy teenagers who think it would look cool on their walls.

...or pervy adults, thinking the same thing.

Yeah.